Migrant Watch

13-YEAR-OLD GIRL ASSAULTED AND RAPED BY LANDLORD

(Kao Wao: Bangkok, December 17, 2003)

A source from the migrant worker's community said a young girl was raped by her landlord in Mahachai, about 35 Km southwest of Bangkok.

On December 11, a Mon girl was raped by Nai Od at "Thawatchai Chang-Ruey Flat" on Derm Bang Road amid crying for help.

The local source reported that Nai Od, the 27 year old son of a 30 rented-room building owner, together with three others came to the room rented by 2 Mon girls around midnight on 11 December. They brought several bottles of beer and asked them for an invite to drink beer inside their tiny apartment. The girls refused, but Nai Od violently slapped the elder sister and threatened them to stay in the room.

After the men got drunk the landlord's son started to molest the younger sister. When the elder sister tried to stop him a fight broke out between them. The elder asked her younger sister to escape from the room. The younger sister had escaped at first along, with the elder sister fleeing in a different direction, but sadly Nai Od's friend outside the room spotted where the young girl had hid, so Nai Od captured the young girl and brought her back into the room and raped her while she pleaded for help from surrounding neighbors. The source said Nai Od brandished a gun to keep people from stopping him.

The two girls are originally from Ye Township, Mon State, in southern Burma from which about fifty thousand registered migrant workers have left to migrate to work in the fishing industry in Mahachai, Thailand.